Misadventures in Trick-or-Treat Town

By Chynna Pace

When four best friends stumble on a portal on Halloween night, they're whisked away into the adventure of a lifetime, full of spooks, magic, and even...danger. Troy, Kaylee, Matt, and Addison find themselves in a magical otherworld where it's Halloween yearround, with witches, fairies, pumpkin creatures, and ghosts for neighbors, and a myriad of colorful, whimsical shops and scenery. At first, their adventure seems like a dream come true. The four of them love all things spooky. But then the scares turn a little too serious, the dangers a little too real. Before they know it, Troy, Kaylee, Matt, and Addison are struggling just to stay alive! But with zombies who want to eat their brains, fairy food that could kill them, and a teenage yeti with an attitude problem who wants to turn them into ice sculptures, will they make it out and back to their world before midnight, when the portal closes for a full year? Or will they be stuck in Trick-or-Treat Town? 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chynna Pace
• Release date: Oct 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223107385

Book preview

Chynna Pace

Misadventures in Trick-or-Treat Town

A Spooky Halloween Tale

Copyright © 2023 by Chynna Pace

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

First edition

Illustration by iStockPhoto.com/Cirodelia

This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

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Contents

1. The Spooky Club

2. Halloween Night

3. Obsidian Street

4. A Sugary Detour

5. Into the Portal

6. Welcome to Trick-or-Treat

7. Candy Thief

8. Giant Pumpkins and Cobblestones

9. Ghost Chase

10. Mayor Spindle

11. A Sweating Ghost

12. Graveyard Zombies

13. The Hobbling Dead

14. Head Toss

15. Another Portal

16. Enchanted Avenue

17. Father Time

18. Wonderland

19. Legendary Catch

20. Deenie the Witch

21. Candy Factory on the Hill

22. The Sugar Emporium

23. The Dragon

24. Part Time Job

25. Quality Control

26. Bathroom Anxiety

27. The Biggest Problem

28. Attack of the Screams

29. The Guardian Cat-Bat

30. Dark Forest

31. Candy Crumbs

32. Tea Party

33. A Clown, A Scarecrow, A Fox, and A Gingerbread Lady

34. Cricket Crumpets and Spider Sandwiches

35. A Disintegrated Scarecrow

36. Ashes, Ashes, They All Fell Down

37. An Unexpected Visitor

38. Dominic Spindle

39. Matt Saves A Ghost

40. Trapped

41. Baby-Faced Monster

42. Victims Rolled in Sugar

43. Dominic Loses His Mind

44. Bullied

45. The Dilemma

46. Trick-for-Treating

47. Kaylee Gets An Idea

48. The Scarecrow Project

49. Mr. Crow

50. Terrible, Grave Danger

51. Question and Answer

52. The Moment of Truth

53. Deus Ex Machina

54. An Unlikely Ally

55. An Actual Vampire Bat

56. Yeti Castle

57. Eddie Yeti

58. The Ice Elevator

59. Fight Scene

60. The Way Back

61. Send-Off

62. Finally Home

63. One Year Later

Also by Chynna Pace

About the Author

1. The Spooky Club

October 31st couldn’t have come fast enough for the Spooky Club.

For best friends, Troy, Kaylee, Matt, and Addison, the quirky group of seventh graders that came up with the Spooky Club last year as a way to make their after school hangouts even more exciting, Halloween was like Christmas. They waited all year for the day they could finally don their creepy costumes and go on a candy collecting spree through their small town.

Not that they didn’t start celebrating months before. In fact, any normal, boring kid at the normal, boring middle school in the very normal and boring town of Pinewood Heights, would probably tell you that Troy, Kaylee, Matt, and Addison, the weird kids, celebrated Halloween all year long.

That was because they loved spooky things. Loved them like most kids loved video games or ice cream or pranking their kid sister for a laugh. Whether it was a movie, a TV show, or a book, if it had a vampire in it, or a ghost, or a group of flesh-eating zombies, or a creepy doll, or a haunted house…they were all for it.

And before they’d come to their senses and formed the Spooky Club so they could meet after school to discuss all things creepy, they’d expressed their love for the deliciously horrific at school, for all to see.

Which was a dangerous move, if you were Troy, who wore nothing but T-shirts featuring old Halloween movie posters, or illustrations of jack-o’-lanterns grinning with glowing eyes, or pictures of eerie blue ghosts.

Or if you were Kaylee. She didn’t just wear the spooky T-shirts. Sometimes she came to school downright dressed for Halloween. Once she even wore the same witch costume for an entire week—in July!

Matt dressed normally, but he wouldn’t stop jabbering on about all the myths and ancient legends surrounding all things horror, especially Halloween—or All Hallows, as he called it. He was the history buff of the group. You couldn’t stand next to him in the lunch line or say Hey, Matt, how’s it going? when you passed him in the halls without him saying something about an ancient All Hallows ritual or the history of scary movies or the truth about poltergeists. He was the expert on all that stuff.

And then there was Addison. She wanted to be a horror writer, and she was already off to a great start. She was constantly writing scary stories in her notebooks, and finding every opportunity to put her work out there. Sometimes she snuck her tales into the school newspaper before it was printed. Sometimes she crept into the principal’s office and read her stories aloud over the intercom for the entire school to hear…until she was caught.

Yeah…Addison was in trouble a lot. Come to think of it, all of them were. Whether that was trouble with their teachers, or trouble with their classmates, who just loved to make fun of them, Troy, Kaylee, Matt, and Addison had gotten into so much trouble over the years, that they’d practically had no choice but to form the Spooky Club.

So they’d backed off a little at school…but after school was a different story.

After school, the four of them met at the abandoned amusement park on the edge of town. Even in the dead of winter when it was cold enough to give them all frostbite, and in the heat of summer when stepping outside for one second turned them into sweat puddles, even then, they always gathered around the broken carousel and told scary stories and talked about all things creepy. They snacked on all the leftover candy they’d stored from past Halloweens, and drank cherry punch that looked like blood.

And most importantly, the Spooky Club counted down the days until they could trick-or-treat again, because trick-or-treating was the pinnacle of spooky success. Running through town after dark, dressed up in costumes, going from house to house and getting buckets of candy, seeing all the creepy decorations everyone put up—it was a horror lover’s dream.

And now, the day was finally here.

2. Halloween Night

Okay, guys—first order of business. Addison pulled her deep black hood over her long, black-dyed hair and stared at each of them with a serious gaze. Her eyes were a creepy light silver color from the colored contacts she’d put in them, and they were lined with black makeup that made her look like a witch.

Actually, her whole costume looked like a witch. But don’t tell her that. She already bit Matt’s head off for suggesting it an hour ago, when the four of them met at Troy’s house to start the night with the iced pumpkin cookies and hot chocolate his mom had made for them. According to Addison, she was a grim reaper, Death himself. Which fit, when you looked at her long cloak, as dark as the sky outside, and the glittering, but thankfully rubber, scythe she was carrying in her left hand. Her right gripped the handle of her purple pumpkin basket.

We start on Cherry Street, she continued, her lips unnaturally fat and slick with the creepy black lipstick she’d put on earlier, after wiping all the cookie crumbs off her mouth before they left Troy’s place. They always have the best stuff. And then Hawk Avenue, Fern Leaf Drive, Berryworth Lane, and finally…Obsidian Street.

A chill ran through the group clustered on the sidewalk outside of Troy’s house. Was it the wind? It was blowing fiercely tonight, making the leaves on the street scuttle like little brown and orange spiders, and the naked branches of the trees in the neighbors’ yards scrape dryly together, a sound like a big monster rubbing his rough hands together.

No. It was the name of that…that place.

Obsidian Street? Kaylee asked. She shivered, and a bright red blush crept into her cheeks, which were covered in orange and green face-paint, made to look like glowing pumpkins. The pumpkins had tiny drops of red paint seeping out of their mouths to resemble blood. The rest of her costume fit with the same vampire pumpkin theme; she wore a giant pumpkin costume, like the kind kindergartners wore, but she’d pasted red ribbons to the corners of its jagged, wide mouth, and smeared fake blood on her own mouth. With Kaylee’s light blond hair bundled in two bouncy ponytails with orange bows in them, the effect was more cute than creepy, but that was Kaylee. She loved the creepy-cute stuff; stories like baby dolls coming to life and turning evil were her favorites.

Obsidian? she repeated with a little shudder. "We’ve never been there before."

Yeah, Troy agreed, shifting from foot to foot in his Dracula costume, the collar pulled all the way up to the back of his orange-red hair. He pulled his rubber fangs out of his mouth and said, Isn’t it like all the way across town?

Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s like a thirty minute walk, Matt said. He was wearing one of those cheesy skeleton costumes, the all black suit with the bones pasted over it. The wind kicked up harder, tousling his long brown hair.

Addison laughed. "You guys! It’s like fifty-six seconds, tops. Plus, we only didn’t go last year or the years before that because were younger. We were wimps. We’re twelve now. Plus, we’ve been talking about going to the witch’s house on Obsidian Street since January. Don’t tell me you guys are gonna chicken out now!"

The witch’s house was what the Spooky Club had dubbed the house at 314 Obsidian Street, even before the Spooky Club was a thing, back when they were just four kids loving scary stuff.

It was a big, old house at the end of a short lane that had been abandoned for ages. When most kids at school just ignored the house, or said it had probably belonged to some crotchety old lady like a thousand years ago, Addison was the one who invented the creepy story about the witch who had lived—and died—in that creepy, worn-down Victorian mansion. She’d used her imagination, which was seriously dangerous sometimes, to conjure up a tale of some lady named Zendora Bluestone who had performed heinous magic rituals in the house, putting curses and hexes on her enemies that had backfired on her own house, turning the boards black and sagging, and the ivy and moss rampant so it climbed up the house and covered every surface.

And yeah, that was probably part of the reason why they’d never even considered stepping one foot on Obsidian Street.

But now…

Troy sighed. "Addy’s right. We have been talking about it."

Yeah… Kaylee bit her lip. She looked out at the street, which was already a hub of activity, even at six-thirty. Kids in costumes were pouring from their houses, people were putting up last minute Halloween decorations. The whole neighborhood was alive with the sounds of excited chatter and whistling winds, and the smells of smoky autumn leaves and Halloween candy. It seemed so safe here…the dark, creepy house on Obsidian Street did not.

But there was no arguing with Addison, and none of them wanted to anyway. They didn’t want to be seen as wimps, even if they were a little bit.

Plus that story about the witch was just fake. Something Addison made up, like all of her scary stories.

And even if it was real, it was just the kinda spooky thing they lived for. They’d love it!

Okay, Kaylee said, with a nervous little smile that made the pumpkins painted on her cheeks stretch. I’m in. I-If you guys are.

Troy grinned. Yeah, me too.

Matt held up a bony finger. "I’m in too. But only if I can stock up on candy first. I’m gonna need a lot of sugar in my system if we’re gonna be going to the witch’s place.

3. Obsidian Street

Trick-or-treat!

The red door with the pumpkin sitting on the front step swung open. An old lady with fluffy white hair and wrinkly arms wrapped around a big bowl of candy took one look at the skeleton, vampire pumpkin, grim reaper, and Dracula on her porch and instantly started beaming.

Well don’t you kids look adorable and spooky! she said. She reached into her candy bowl and scooped out a hefty handful. "My, my, my, we have done well tonight, haven’t we?" She chuckled as she took in the four kids’ overflowing pumpkin baskets.

It was only eight-fifteen, and they were already full to the brim. Which meant the time was coming for them to leave the bright and cheerily decorated Berryworth Lane behind and head across town to Obsidian Street.

Addison laughed. We’ve had a good night.

I should say so! chuckled the friendly old woman. She dropped a fistful of peanut butter cups, sour gummy worms, mini chocolate bars, and packets of candy corn onto the top of each of their buckets, wished them a Happy Halloween, and then sent them off into the night.

We really did get a lot of good stuff, Troy said, taking out his fangs to stop right in the middle of the street and unwrap a peanut butter cup. Copying him, Kaylee and Matt started unwrapping pieces of their candy too.

First it was the crinkling of the plastic wrappers. Then a kid’s excited shriek pierced the chilly silence further down the street. Someone, somewhere, activated an animatronic witch on their porch; its freaky computerized cackles echoed through the whole neighborhood.

Then Addison huffed and rolled her eyes. She was the only one not eating any candy.

Okay, guys, you’ve had your sugar. Can we go now?

GULP.

Three loud swallows, six wide eyes. Kaylee, Troy, and Matt looked at each other. Then at Addison.

Okay, Troy said, stuffing the wrapper into the pocket of his Dracula costume. We’re ready.

The four of them, even Addison, who would never admit she was scared for anything, huddled close together on the way there.

Obsidian Street wasn’t thirty minutes away, but it wasn’t close either, and the four of them had to hurry along the main highway of Pinewood Heights to get there.

The moment they stepped out of the familiar neighborhoods and into the street where the blackness of night seemed so much blacker than normal, they felt like they were walking into uncharted territory. The streets they knew well, the streets full of lighted jack-o’-lanterns and twinkling fairy lights, of trick-or-treaters and smiling people waiting to dole out candy by the fistful, were behind them now and had never seemed so far away.

And it was cold, a different kind of cold that snuck icy fingers underneath their costumes and turned their skin to fields of goosebumps.

They tasted lingering sugar in their mouths, and fear too.

And then…after a few minutes…

There it is, Addison whispered.

The